Why should an opaque revenue model decide which college sports survive? My opponent says athletes generate money and deserve a cut, and that fairness point has real force. But salaries paid by schools would turn athletic departments into payrolls, forcing many to cut non-revenue sports and women's teams to fund a few star programs. NIL lets athletes earn from their name and likeness without making schools their employers. That's a fairer, less centralized fix.

What the other side gets wrong is where the money would actually go. A salary pool funded by schools would flow mainly to football and men's basketball, the sports with TV revenue. The non-scholarship athlete with $80,000 in debt? They'd see nothing. That's an allocation problem: rewards sorted by revenue, not need. I agree the debt is real, and that part of my opponent's case lands. But the fix is need-based aid and open NIL markets, not making schools employers of a chosen few. Their goal is good. Their mechanism misses the exact people they're defending.

Imagine a payroll algorithm ranking athletes by TV minutes and social reach, then paying accordingly. My opponent says schools could just cut coach buyouts and luxury suites instead. Fair, but that assumes a centralized budget process will act fairly, and the same athletic departments already hide spending in opaque funds. Salaries would follow revenue data, not need, so the non-scholarship athlete with debt stays invisible. NIL plus need-based aid is the privacy-respecting, less centralized fix.